


Weariness

by saavik13



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 19:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saavik13/pseuds/saavik13
Summary: Suddenly he didn’t feel quite as old.





	Weariness

Cassandra Cillian & Jenkins | Galahad

Jenkins wasn’t the man he once was. Time had worn him down in ways he hoped the others never understood. He’d seen too much, been too much, to ever be the youth that had so impetusly followed Arthur and Merlin into legend. Most of the time, if he was truthful, he regretted his choice to pledge himself to the library not because he had outlived his friends or because it bound him to a life of service, but because he was just tired, so very very tired.

It didn’t help when he was on the downward end of the cycle. The library could give him eternal life but not eternal youth, and so like all things he aged. When he died of old age he would return as he had been the day he gave himself to the great library, youthful in appearance if not in heart. It was always easier physically to be that young but it never felt right, not anymore, not when he was as old as rocks. 

Having so many librarians all bouncing around the place made him feel even older. It was nice, if he was honest with himself, to have company again. And they were all so full of life, and energy, and hope. He could remember hope… remember what it tasted like when you sat around a table and drank it in along with the wine in your cup. He could remember what it was like to dream that the world could change for the better, that you could have a hand in it. The reality was so very different, that every day was just another in an endless string of eternal battles against chaos, that there could be no real progress in that battle only losses and stalemates and the rare, so rare, victory. And no matter which it was, the next day would start with another and then another and then another… 

He’d have traded places with Cassandra in an instant if he could. To know your end was not only possible but emanate. To live each day as if it was perhaps your last… it would make things taste again, make each moment have beauty and scope and meaning like it once had… Oh he’d have relished his impending death with open arms.

But it wasn’t him who had that gift, it was her. And because it was her he loathed that time bomb in her head more than he had any of the monsters he had fought. Because if he was being honest, achingly cloyingly honest, he had to admit that he liked her. He was long past the age where he could believe in anything so foolish as love, at least not love like the poets wrote about or ballads were composed over. That was nothing more than a mix of hormones and desire and imagination that planted a seed in a person’s brain, not unlike her tumor, and that seed grew and grew until it consumed someone. He’d watched it happen so many times – felt it one memorable and horrible incidence. No, that wasn’t what he felt for her. 

Being apart from them as only immortality could make him, Jenkins as he preferred to be called these days, couldn’t fall victim to that illness anymore than he could the plague or the flu or a bus accident. No, he couldn’t become lost in the swirl of such a human thing, not anymore. But he could find her delightful. Her cheery face and her brilliant mind was like a lighthouse in a sea of dullards. He could find the scent of her hair arousing; the touch of her small hand on his arm could still kindle a whisper of passion. He could want to protect her, and teach her, and hold her. That degree of passion was not yet beyond him. 

Only to act upon it was. Cassandra was a librarian. Transitory if brilliant. If her grape didn’t kill her, the job would. And he’d have to watch it, possibly even survive whatever it was that killed her. He’d have to care for her body and mourn with her fellows and splash a handful of dirt into that dreadful last hole. 

Romantics liked to write plots about how it was easier to love from afar rather than get close when loss was immediate. It was a foolish notion. The ghosts of what might have been were always worse than the ghosts of what _was_. If he’d thought she’d entertain even a hint of advance he’d have made it. But there was no way she would or could. His brilliant lady was as innocent as she was magnificent. Innocence in a modern pit of debauchery, and he would never challenge that. 

“Jenkins?” Her soft voice interrupted his musing and he put down the book he’d been pretending to study and turned to her.

“Yes?”

Her tiny mouth turned down in a frown. “You look sad. Is everything alright?”

He couldn’t help smiling at her, knowing it too would appear sad. “Of course. I’m always alright Ms. Cillian.”

“You only call me that when you’re trying to be distant.” She sat down on the edge of his work table and regarded him with a quizzical tilt of the head. “You can talk to me you know. I know it’s your job to take care of us when we need it but right now I’m perfectly fine.” She kicked her feet slightly. “See? All in working order. So let me take care of you for a little bit.”

“That’s not your job.” He set the book back on a pile and moved around the table to lean against it next to her. “Truly, I am fine, Cassandra. Just tired.”

Her head dropped to his shoulder, warm and so inviting. People rarely touched him - he rarely let them – and the gesture sent shivers through him. “I can’t imagine how tired you must be after all the years.” She said it softly, her tone deep and layered. Her little hand slid into his. “I know we must seem so fleeting to you and I know you probably don’t want to get attached to us, and I understand.” She tipped her head back to look at him and he couldn’t help but meet her eyes. “But you need people too, Jenkins, otherwise the loneliness might not kill you but it will certainly crush you.”

“I have people,” he managed to say. He wanted to say he had her, for his hand had taken to gripping hers rather tightly at the words, but he kept it back.  
She smiled gently, “true. But you hide away even when you don’t need to. How about coming out for a movie?”

“I don’t like to leave the library if I can help it.” He admitted, gazing around the cluttered workroom of the annex. “I’m one of the defenses.”

Cassandra nodded. “I know. But you do leave it sometimes, and everyone else is here. It would be a good time to stretch your legs a little before the next crisis. When’s the last time you did anything just for fun?”

Centuries he wanted to say. “Last week – we had that horrible salad from that restaurant in Turkey and played 10 pins.”

“That was four weeks ago,” Cassandra corrected. “and it was here in the library and you barely ate any of it.” Her nose wrinkled, “which proves you were smarter than the rest of us.”

He laughed, a real laugh, filled with actual mirth instead of feigned. “Recognizing food born pathogens doesn’t make me smarter. I’ve just ingested it before and know what it is.”

She smiled. “So you have a duty to come with me to a movie so you can test the popcorn.”

If it had been anyone else he’d have objected to being relegated to the role of food tester. “I suppose you are right, can’t expect you to avoid trouble all by yourself.”

“It’s a date.” She hopped off the desk and tugged on his hand. “If I’d waited for you to ask I’d have been as old as the library.” She winked, actually winked, at him. 

Suddenly he didn’t feel quite as old.


End file.
